Arab Strap

The Scottish duo who forged today's music landscape with fire are saying goodbye, bidding us farewell. Aidan and Malcolm, though, have decided to do it their own way, with a farewell tour that's special, moving, priceless. A series of shows to thank their audience, the people who've supported them through these years of "tears". Yes, as hinted at in the title of their last release: "Ten Years Of Tears". Ten years of hushed melancholy, ten years of veiled emotions, ten years of songs that have marked our hearts. The atmosphere inside the Bologna venue is lukewarm. A sour note on an otherwise fantastic evening: one really expected a bigger turnout, especially in a city like Bologna, where the so-called "indie" scene is so active and present. Instead, the number of people in attendance is nowhere near enough to honour such an important event. The wait is nerve-wracking, the minutes drag on like hours, the band is slow to take the stage, and the crowd pressed up against it starts to grumble restlessly.

Then, suddenly, the gorgeous bagpipe melody from the track "(Loch Loven Intro)", taken from "Monday At The Hug And Pint", begins to fill the void that had dangerously formed in the air. Their performance unfolds with great ease, without a single hitch, showing a real knack for commanding the stage. The only thing that feels off, though it remains just an impression, is the coldness hanging between Aidan and Malcolm. The two never look each other in the eye, carrying out their roles in front of the audience flawlessly but at a distance. Was there really some tension between them? The doubt lingers. The thunderous pounding that opens "Fucking Little Bastards" spreads through the crowd's ears and swallows up every bit of silence left behind. The performance is, if anything, even more electric and aggressive than what you hear on record. Searing, almost noise-level guitar lines from Middleton accompany Aidan's lurching, prickly vocals, as he loses himself completely in a world of gestures and schizophrenia; the drummer seems like an unstoppable grinding machine, and the crowd breaks into a spastic, unrestrained dance. Perhaps the most exhilarating moment of the whole show, where the calm repressed in the previous songs explodes with stunning force.

At first, the thought of hearing "Who Named The Days?" live made us wince, thinking of the absence of the violins, the defining element of the album version. Instead, we're proven wrong. Despite the missing strings, the instrumental ensemble, bolstered by Aidan's stage presence and vocal personality, fills the venue with sounds that are faint, gentle, touching, terribly "dangerous". Pure emotion expressed through notes, a song that lingers endlessly in the listener's mind, veiled and silent words of love, shards of pain hissing through the mind. The "Philophobia moment" is of course eagerly awaited, and the band delivers it with one of the finest songs on the record and in their whole catalogue: the first hushed notes of "New Birds" begin, and its story unfolds, carried by Aidan's voice, which almost seems reluctant to be heard. The atmosphere in the venue closes in on itself, as the song flows slow and sad, bitter, toward a breathtaking final crescendo; the sound grows darker and more violent, claustrophobic, before receding once more to the foot of the stage, leaving a painful void. And so another of the show's emotional high points passes, as it edges toward its final chapter. Amid the strangely "happy" notes of "There's No Ending", there's a surprise with the performance of the first single "The First Big Weekend", from 1996, and for the first time the band disappears behind the curtains.

When they return to the stage, Aidan and Malcolm are alone, stripped of the other musicians who had accompanied them until now. Only the two of them come back, as if to say, "here we are, this is really our goodbye, farewell". The ending of this long send-off couldn't have been better: the two Scots take their places, one in front of the microphone, the other seated beside him with a guitar in hand; the small crowd freezes, almost holding a single collective breath, waiting to receive one last gift from the duo, the testimony of 10 years of love stories, of sex, of words spilled in a pub, blurred by a melancholy drunkenness. And it's with the words of "Packs Of Three", the opening track of "Philophobia", that one final story begins, with Aidan's low, assured voice slowly creeping into the mind of everyone present, giving shape to figures and situations. It's a calm, narrative pace, a small kind of magic split between a personal, secret intimacy and the shades of a distant memory. The final moment is the sheer emotion of discovering just how beautiful "The Shy Retirer" can be in its acoustic version, and the sense of loneliness the two will leave behind is already palpable. "But how do you know you've ever really loved?", sings Aidan, singing of conscious fears, singing of that slightly crooked, never-forced romanticism that the band gifts us in this moment, in a kind of bare, downcast ballad, a walk back home along the same deserted street after an evening spent remembering. And so, almost without noticing, it's all over, it's already time to wake up. They thank the crowd, they say goodbye, in a tone that feels less like a farewell and more like a "see you again" at some unspecified point in the future. The curtain falls on the long journey of Arab Strap, leaving us with regret, the bitterness for what could still have been, but also with a great deal of joy, the kind of joy no one speaks of but that stays tucked away in a corner once the party's over. Arab Strap's story ends right now, after 10 years of tears: all that's left is to put on the pointed hat and sit off to the side, watching, a little lost, what remains.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google